


Castaways

by ThisUsernameTaken



Series: beat in step we breathe in time (oh say to me that you'll be mine) [2]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Feels, Arc Reactor Angst, Denial, Depends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, One Shot, Short, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tags Subject to Change, bits and bobs, doing fuck all with the chapter titles, just take some key words, multiple actually, some semblance of order, spin them around, stick some parentheses in and bam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-06-23 06:13:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15600078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisUsernameTaken/pseuds/ThisUsernameTaken
Summary: Just a place to stick things in this 'verse that don't really fit anywhere in the main story at the moment. Not interconnected.--There’s a splinter in his chest. It starts from the centre, the beginning, the thud of a heartbeat against his ribs.It’s a steady rhythm, for how many times it’s been stopped before.(Ch. 2)





	1. The matter of things (they don't, they do)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Denial, but hopefully worded nicely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may expand upon this later, throw Tony into the mix. Who knows?

Stephen is -- well. He’s many things. Bitter, for one. Enraged. Despairing. Hollow.

 

He’d lost his profession, his funds, his one colleague, friend, hell, maybe even love.

 _“This is the part where you apologize.”_ _  
_ _“This is the part where you leave.”_

They knew their marks didn’t match. It didn’t matter, then -- after all, it had worked for others before, hadn’t it?

 

Never mind the guilt ridden accounts of people waking in the night to the echo of heartbroken sobs, the feeling of shattered emptiness in both their chests as their partner slept on unknowingly beside them.

Never mind the hypothetical nightmares he’d constructed for himself during the few nights he lifted the band over his wrist and - what? Dreamed, raged, hoped, apologized?

 

Stephen was not one to love.

His family he adored, of course, but the skyrocketing of his success had made him closed off, materialistic. Besides, there was no one left in his family worth loving. It didn’t matter if they loved him regardless. It didn’t.

 

He stared with bloodshot eyes as his bank account depleted with every surgery. He closed eyes ringed with purple as they began, and opened them to bright lights and defeat.

He stared, closed, opened.

Closed them again. Sometimes, he didn’t want to open them at all.

 

He was tired.

 

Exhausted, spent. Aimless and adrift in a sinking boat, with no end in sight. It was ridiculous, he knew, to wax poetic misery at three in the morning, subjecting himself to willful torment as shaking fingers worked the death machine they’d given him as a decoy of recovery.

He knew he wasn’t getting better. That he wouldn’t, going about it the way he was. The pain was grounding, sickening as it may be, a reminder that he remained solidly on this wretched earth and not, rather, drowning just below the surface.

So he kept going. Whether out of stubbornness, hope, or sheer denial; it didn’t matter.

 

It didn’t matter that the constant phantom hum of his one connection to one Anthony Edward Stark, a weight in his chest that served as both agony and reassurance, was gone.

 

It didn’t matter that he could feel the jackhammer of Stark’s heartbeat as his nerves blazed fire through his hands, up his arms, into his body.

 

It didn’t matter how he would choke on the pained hitch of breath of another that clawed up his throat with every twitch of his fingers.

 

It didn’t matter, these feelings, sensations, this connection of theirs that neither reached out to touch.

It didn’t matter; the way they mattered most of all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops -- accidental title drop? Please validate my efforts


	2. clockwork stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a splinter in his chest. It starts from the centre, the beginning, the thud of a heartbeat against his ribs. 
> 
> It’s a steady rhythm, for how many times it’s been stopped before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> couldn't really come up with any parentheses so uh  
> have a title based on literally one sentence

There’s a splinter in his chest. It starts from the centre, the beginning, the thud of a heartbeat against his ribs.

 

It’s a steady rhythm, for how many times it’s been stopped before. He breathes. In, out. In, out. He starts with half an inhale, twice out. It’s never been enough. (Even now, the weight of it gone, agony, reassurance; something else weighs them down; memories, history, pain, in all its transferred forms.)

 

(And when did that happen, really, nestled safely in his home, before being blown aside, blown apart, shrapnel in his chest, blood over his eyes?)

 

Red and gold flashes by, silhouetted against a fiery explosion over desert sands. 2008, reads the scrolling bar at the bottom of the news broadcast.

 

It’s been eight years, now.

 

If you wanted to get technical, chronological, specific, _truth_ \-- well. It’s been more of a thirty, nearing four. He feels the universe laughing at him, this, them-- it’s not a tangible thing, so much as paranoia, so much as an overactive imagination, four in the morning, a steaming mug held close to the chest with shaking fingers as the sensation of sparks to the half-heard whir of machinery trails across his skin, flits through his ears.

 

And he knows he’s exhausted this before, the late nights come early morning, the near unhealthy amounts of tea as he hazily contemplates nothing in particular, the universe and all its stars. The pain, of course, is nothing new. He knows he’s exhausted this all before, but it’s become routine, and one never grows tired of clockwork. (One never grows tired of the stars. And Stark-- Tony, Stark, burning and bright and inexpressible, inexhaustible, predictable as a comet but exponentially as lasting in its inferno-- well. Just what was one to make of that?)

 

He breathes, half an inhale and twice out. It’s never enough. But he feels a heartbeat, lodged firmly beneath his ribs beside his own, beating in tandem, and it’s Stark’s, it’s Stephen’s, it’s _his_ , both in the sense that it was, that it wasn’t. And of course it’s four in the morning, and of course it could just be nothing but the residual haze of a spell gone awry, the Cloak over his back, the workings of the universe and that beyond. It could be any number of things. He presses a hand over his chest, a gesture he’s surely to be embarrassed over come more lucid hours.

 

And somewhere, somewhere, a mask’s flipped up, grease over hair, gauntleted hand over fractured chest, warmth even through reinforced metal; the tired arc of his smile. Tea and cold coffee, callused hands to a tremble. Dawn rises pale and bright, watery gold to pink streaked blue skies. They smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> figured since the main story's at a standstill i could write a little of the inbetween-- how'd i do?


End file.
